


like a moth to you

by gealbhan



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff without Plot, Intrusive Thoughts, Tattoos, implied nudity i guess? but nothing sexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 17:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: Jude would be more than content to fall asleep like this if not for Agnes’ finger running along her back, heavy enough to keep her in the present.





	like a moth to you

**Author's Note:**

> just something short and sweet to warm up! warning for canon-typical mentions of murder/burning/body horror and an experience with fire-related intrusive thoughts (go to the next paragraph at "For a moment, as though summoned, unwanted images flash through Jude’s mind" if you'd like to skip that one).
> 
> title from hozier's "sunlight" (it and nfwmb are Very Good agnes/jude songs. i say this having already used nfwmb as a dasira song, so maybe it's tma wlw in general?). enjoy!

It’s late, but the curtains aren’t yet drawn, nor is any sort of lamp lit. The dark surrounds Jude and Agnes as they lie together, warmed by little more than the sheets and each other’s natural body temperatures. Only the faint light of the moon streaming in keeps them company. Agnes’ light is more than enough to make Jude feel here at home in this darkness.

The night air is still and silent. Jude basks in it. Closes her eyes, exacerbating the inky blackness consuming her vision. She breathes in tune to the mental picture of a flame flickering against that pitch darkness.

She would be more than content to fall asleep like this if not for Agnes’ finger running along her back, heavy enough to keep Jude in the present.

Agnes draws along freckles and moles, links their interwoven patterns like constellations. Jude’s very body is a weapon, but Agnes touches her without hesitation. Maybe because she understands what it’s like to be capable of such destruction, such desolation. Maybe only because she knows Jude would rather set herself aflame again than bring any sort of harm to her. Whatever the case, Agnes’ finger moves slowly but with confidence.

Jude’s eyes stay closed, head almost buried in the sheets, but she pays attention to the path Agnes traces. As she moves her finger, Agnes taps a subtle beat into Jude’s skin. Jude’s never had the time to learn Morse or any other sort of code, and she doesn’t recognize the rhythm as a song, but it’s calming enough that she might find sleep like this anyway.

Jude feels it when Agnes moves on from a mole at the base of her neck to her back tattoo. Feels it in that she feels where Agnes’ finger is now resting, and feels it in that a certain kind of reverence now accompanies Agnes’ movements.

Agnes has a sort of fascination with tattoos—while she’s never gotten one herself, as her body is (literally) a temple, she dotes on Jude’s. Sometimes there’s only one for her to do so on; sometimes, they’re all over Jude’s body. Jude hasn’t added a new one in some time. She has a few constants, but since tattoo artists don’t know how to deal with wax, nowadays all she has to do is concentrate and mold her skin to her liking. Her form allows for a kind of freedom she’d never known.

The past few weeks, she’s been considering adding one of Agnes’ name in a heart wreathed in flame. Ironic, of course. Or at least that’s what she’d say.

Right now, Agnes is running her finger across the lines of Jude’s personal favorite—the only one she’d had before her rebirth. She’s never been able to make it look quite the same, each tweak making it look a bit more melted, but her recreations are close enough.

When Agnes speaks, her voice is low. “What does this one mean again?”

“It’s a man screaming in the fires of Hell,” Jude deadpans. “You do the math.”

Agnes laughs, a huff of warm breath against Jude’s back. Agnes’ laughter has always been as beautiful as every other part of her—a surprisingly rough sound for her soft face, a sizzling noise underneath (or maybe that’s Jude’s imagination twisting it into more than it is).

“Yes, but is it meant to symbolize anything else?”

“Not everything has to be a damned symbol. It’s just cool.”

“True enough,” Agnes decides. Her finger curves, following the detail of the man’s face contorted in a scream of pain and terror. That, Jude’s always been able to nail. She’s witnessed the agony on people’s faces when they burn firsthand enough times to be able to make a perfect recreation.

What a lovely expression indeed. She smiles into the sheets.

Agnes’ finger, after running along the flames with careful precision, slides toward Jude’s arm. She takes her time with the swell of Jude’s bicep—“Thinking about getting one for you there,” Jude volunteers, earning another laugh—before coming to the half-sleeve below the elbow. It’s an uncharacteristic one, an experiment: a floral piece. Violets and roses woven together and curling around Jude’s forearm. She’s already grown bored with it, but maybe if Agnes likes it—

“Violets, hm?”

“What else would I have picked?” Jude doesn’t mention that she’d learned of the historical lesbian significance from Gretchen, who’d given them to her on their first date. She sees no reason to mention that life ever again.

Agnes strokes the stem of one flower and the petals of another. Her finger stirs the hair on the back of Jude’s arm. If Jude were ticklish, she would be in laughing fits, but as it stands she only shivers a little.

“This one is pretty,” says Agnes. “But not really your style.”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll have the roses be on fire next time.”

“Now that sounds more like you.”

She moves onto Jude’s other arm with a leap of her finger, which is gone from one arm one second and running down the other the next. There are no tattoos on this arm now, only more scattered moles. Agnes no longer takes her time drawing lines—instead, she bounces from mole to mole like she’s playing a frenzied game of hopscotch. Jude has to get readjusted to the staccato tap-tap-tap of her finger after so long of a coherent pattern.

After a while, apparently sated, Agnes drifts back to the stretch of Jude’s back. She lays a quick kiss on the base of Jude’s neck. The place where Agnes’ lips had been tingles once she pulls them away, hair still brushing against Jude’s back as Agnes returns to admiring the back tattoo.

Agnes’ touches become ghosts, too faint to keep Jude truly here. She sinks into her own mind.

No matter how comfortable she is, she’ll still always think of fire. Of petrol and the sweet, sweet scent of burning. Of devotion through self-desolation. No matter how she loves Agnes so, she still looks at their curtains and sees how paper-thin they are, how fast they would burn if some heat was applied. And those are the voluntary thoughts. The ones that shake her to her core are the unwarranted ones, ideas she’d never consciously consider.

For a moment, as though summoned, unwanted images flash through Jude’s mind—of fire, lots and lots of fire. Spilling from a lit match that hasn’t quite reached a candle or the candle itself knocked to the floor. Licking across her palm, melting it to nothingness. Turning the altar that is Agnes to sacrilegious ash. Consuming the curtains, the bed, the bodies within, the room, the entire house in an inferno so hot it can be felt from miles away and so bright it lights up the night sky. Leaving nothing untouched.

And just as soon as they’d sprung up, they’re gone, and she’s shaking from their vividness—or their absence.

Agnes feels it and retreats, her warmth ripped away. Despite her own intrinsic warmth, a chill runs through Jude. “Jude?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles, muffled by the sheets.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer. She screws her eyes tighter shut, presses her face deeper into the mattress. The only sound in the room is Agnes’ quiet breathing, the heat radiating off of her that Jude can still feel if she concentrates hard enough.

Then Agnes’ hand returns to her skin—her whole hand this time, not only a finger following intricate patterns. She doesn’t move it in any sort of rhythm, only smooths a soothing palm against Jude’s back. Jude hums in acknowledgment.

“It’s all right,” Agnes says. “I’m here.”

Her words, per se, aren’t reassuring—they’re not in that insipid pitiful tone Jude despises people using. They’re matter-of-fact and simple. Honest in a way only Agnes can be.

Jude isn’t honest, not if she can help it, so how genuine Agnes is sometimes scares her. Funny, isn’t it, that she can set people and their lives ablaze without so much as blinking, but it’s basic human decency that cuts her deep. (As human as either of them or their actions can be considered to be.)

“Yeah,” she says, shaking Agnes’ hand off so she can twist onto her back. “I know you are.”

Jude can’t see Agnes very well in the darkness, only the static-surrounded image of her face haloed by auburn hair that burns as bright as any flame. But she’s looking down at Jude with a smile that traps her like a deer in headlights. Being caught by Agnes’ eyes is more unnerving—and more thrilling—when facing her. Jude revels in it, in the way Agnes’ gaze always pins anyone she looks at while she stares like she’s looking for something and unable to find it. Jude doesn’t do a lot of hoping, but she hopes someday Agnes finds that something. Even if not from her.

Agnes’ smile softens as though she’s seen that desire in Jude’s face. Jude reaches out on instinct to tuck Agnes’ hair back, fingers lingering and dull nails catching against skin as she follows the curve of Agnes’ ear down. A stray strand of hair comes loose in her palm, and she discards it with a flick of the wrist.

“Kind of gross.”

“I’m made of wax,” retorts Jude. She doesn’t melt her own hand to demonstrate, tempting as it is. Pushing the limitations of her form is so _easy_ now—but she wouldn’t want to make a mess in their bed. Wax is difficult to clean. “Gross is my specialty.”

Then, without preamble, because she can, Jude cups Agnes’ cheek and leans up to kiss her. It’s a softer kiss than Jude is used to giving. Agnes’ lips are warm and alive against hers, almost hot enough that they might have burned a lesser person.  All it does for Jude is make her smile and lean further in.

A fter a moment, Agnes pulls away. Her forehead rests against Jude’s, breath that smells faintly of smoke still fanning against Jude’s face. Jude keeps her eyes closed and listens to the steadying beat of Agnes inhaling and exhaling to catch her breath.

“We should sleep,” says Agnes. “Long day ahead.”

“Is it?” Jude asks with muted alarm. All of the days run together now, so she’s not sure what’s on the docket for tomorrow.

Agnes laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “Isn’t it always?” she says, and she sounds so  _tired_ that Jude opens her eyes with more extreme alarm.

Agnes’ face is impossible to read most of the time, but especially now, given the lighting.  Jude kisses her again, even gentler. Gentle is not her strong suit nor something she’s experienced in—but it’s what Agnes deserves in moments like these, and so Jude scrounges up the most minute part of herself to give it to her. When she breaks the kiss, Agnes is smiling, however slight. It’s an accomplishment, Jude figures, and she smiles back.

They don’t bother to draw the curtains before lying down. They settle in facing away from one another. It’s easier to watch each other’s backs that way. Jude will wake up in the morning to find Agnes’ taller form wrapped around hers, she knows, as she always does, but it’s the thought that counts.

A few moments pass before Jude realizes she won’t find sleep any time soon. At first she chalks it up to still being keyed up from Agnes’ ministrations before realizing she’s calm but  _under_ stimulated. Agnes’ back brushes hers every couple of minutes with every toss and turn of Agnes’, but that’s not enough to keep her content.

“…Agnes?” Jude brings herself to ask, hoping she’s not already fallen asleep.

“Yes?”

“Would you—” A resigned sigh. “Would you rub my back again?”

Agnes doesn’t answer that either, but there’s a rustling sound like her adjusting the covers and turning, and then a hand is soothing up and down Jude’s back. This time, it takes the rhythm of what Jude recognizes through her sleep-deprived haze as an old lullaby. Agnes hums the same tune under her breath.

“Thank you,” whispers Jude.

At the same pace it takes fire to consume the wick of a candle, grounded by her beloved’s hand against her shoulder blades, Jude falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! if you have time to spare, comments & kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> [tumblr](http://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com) | [twitter](http://twitter.com/withlittlequill)


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